Practical Democracy

Critique the electoral process in the U.S. and suggest improvements. [Dates earlier than 2012 are spurious. I predated posts to arrange them in 'book order', but the result was unsatisfactory. Ignore the dates, focus on the content.]

Sunday, April 7, 2013

Posted as part of a discussion of a progressive tax on corporate gross receipts, on Quora:

Good Morning, Tom Byron

Thank you for your thoughtful response to this critical question. Our
views may differ, but your critique gives us an opportunity to examine
the issue in detail. Since my answer on Quora will not appear as
primary text, I will also post it on my Quora blog and invite you to be
an additional author, so we can continue reasoning our way to a rational
conclusion.

re:
"Why is too big to fail a problem? Too big to fail is only a problem
when public tax dollars are at risk. Many many businesses have failed
and disappeared. Who decides how big is too big? Bureaucrats? It is
more likely that a large business would want to self-deconstruct into
separate entities for better product identity."

Organizations that become 'too big to fail' are a problem, not only
because they put public money at risk, but because they become
uncontrollable. Randall Forsyth, in a column titled "Too Big to Jail",
in the March 11, 2013 issue of Barron's, wrote:

In a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, he (Iowa
Senator Charles Greeley) expressed concern to Attorney General Eric
Holder that some institutions had become "too big to jail" (... text
omitted ...) Holder agreed: "The concern that you have raised is one
that I frankly share. (... text omitted ...) But I am concerned that
the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does
become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with
indications that if you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge,
it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even
the world economy."

Another aspect of the adverse effect of excessive size is our
government's unwillingness to enforce our laws penalizing corporate
crime. An instance was described by Jack Willoughby in a column titled,
"SEC spares UBS a Worse Fate", describing how the Securities and
Exchange Commission, in an abject failure to meet its obligation to
protect the public interest, exempted UBS Securities from a mandatory
10-year ban on its activities after it was found guilty of securities
crime. Corporations cannot be expected to stop criminal activity when
they know they will not be punished.

These examples are but the tip of an iceberg of problems with firms that become "Too Big To Fail".

As you imply, no-one can decide "how big is too big?". We want to give
our entrepreneurs the freedom to grow. Corporate growth can be good,
and healthy, and desirable. Some business must be larger than others
(public utilities are an example), so it is impossible to make a
judgment that a given size is good or bad. Size is merely a method of
description. Since there cam be no objective measure of 'too big', we
need a mechanism that uses the market to detect excessive size.

If, by the nature of its business, an enterprise must be large, it is
not injured by a progressive tax on its gross receipts because all
competing businesses must attain a similar size. However, when a
company grows beyond an economically justifiable size, the tax acts to
protect the public interest without additional regulation.

re:
"The Bell System was a classic monopoly. The company provided national
access to a communications system with innovation and research. Service
was widely available and market penetration was in the high 90%.
Capital was invested in the network and growth was steady. It can be
argued that rural customers were the last to receive telephone service.
This was due to cost per mile for construction. These costs were shared
across the rate paying public and regulated by Public Service
Commissions. The cost causers were the cost bearers. Your rates were
based on where you lived. It was economies of scale."

The Bell System is a good example. When it was young, dynamic and
growing, it was a boon to society. After it matured and began
perpetuating its own existence (something all of us would like to do,
but are prevented by the cycle of life), it became injurious to society
by suppressing alternatives. As soon as the Bell System was broken up,
alternatives mushroomed and the market blossomed with diversity.

re:
"Profitability is the core driver of a capitalist system. We are
introducing an 'amorphous' societal influence of what 'feels good' for
customers in the product they choose to buy."

We must not forget that competition is the leavening force in a
capitalist system. The quest for profit, though vital as a driving
force, does not justify the elimination of competition. Competition is a
necessary ingredient the ensures quality products and fair pricing. It
is unwise to pay lip service to capitalism by endorsing profit while
ignoring acts that diminish competition.

re:
"Exploitation is paid for in the taxes levied on the corporation in
consumption of resources. These are Federal Excise Taxes, local taxes,
state taxes, etc."

Oh, I agree that there is no shortage of taxes. Neither is there any
shortage of ways in which they are avoided. In corporations,
transforming of profits into expenses is a fine art. As a matter of
fact, enacting a progressive gross receipts tax, without reserve or
allowance, will be a major challenge in a political environment
controlled by political parties that depend on the financial support of
big business. Still, even that's not cast in concrete. In time, in the
same way that we gradually came to acknowledge the earth is not flat,
we will learn the folly of letting vested interests control our
political leaders.

re:
"The society determines the fairness of the product when they freely
choose to consume the product. They arrive at a price they are willing
to pay out of their disposable income. An additional extraction of fees
for use of a product will go to the government for what? Reducing the
cost of the product? For supporting social welfare projects? For
subsidizing those who can't afford this product?"

The additional fees simply reduce the benefit of monstrous growth. A
progressive gross receipts tax has no meaningful impact on a company
until it begins to exceed its economically justifiable size. It is the
one way society can eliminate companies that are "Too Big To Fail" while
enhancing competition and automatically fighting inflation.

re:
"How does layering an additional tax on a product not make it more
expensive? Who pays for this added cost to the end-user of what they
have decided was a fair price for a useful service?"

As you say, taxes are an expense of doing business. They increase the
cost of doing business, and that cost is added to all other costs to
determine the price of the company's goods and services. Taxes are
always passed on to the consumer.

That is exactly the point of a progressive tax. When a company attains
unwarranted size by manipulating the rules in its own favor or
dominating its competitors to the detriment of the public, the tax adds a
cost to its operation. It encourages the growth of smaller companies
by providing an umbrella protecting them from improper domination. It
has the added advantage that it allows companies to meet the tax in
their own way. Some (like those that absorbed suppliers or competitors)
may elect to spin those entities off, to resize their operations to a
smaller tax base. The option is theirs.

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

An acquaintance asked me (in relation to the need to harness human
nature by making probity an asset in our natural attempt to pursue our
own interest), 'where does human nature come from'.

Oh, my goodness, what an immense vista this question opens. Although I
doubt anyone can answer the question with certainty, here is the best I
can do after a lifetime of thought on the matter:

I'm 84 years old. Questions of right and wrong, good and bad, and so
forth, have dominated my mind throughout my life. I can remember
walking to and from grade school with my best friend, discussing these
topics. I have no way of knowing whether I'm more susceptible to such
thoughts than others. All I know is that they've always been important
to me.

If one wants to consider such matters, our society gives us a wealth of
material to ponder. The difficulty is that the field is so vast, and
the inter-dependencies so complex, that selecting and analyzing
circumstances that depict our nature, even examples we can call 'good'
or 'bad' is challenging.

As I've tried to think about the world in which I've lived, the goal of
my examination has been to consider our nature and ways to harness it.
Over time, I've been forced to hone and whittle my ideas, seeking a
basic concept that might be helpful. If I've found one, it is that we
must understand our nature before we can develop institutions that
capitalize on our strengths and control our weaknesses.

In thinking about the topic of good and evil, which is a part of our
nature, I found something that was, to me, startling. I found there's a
sensible reason why the strong take advantage of the weak (a
circumstance I characterize as 'bad'). To me, the idea is very
powerful. It may be the first step in understanding why civilization
developed as it did. You may consider this idea 'common knowledge', and
it may be so, but, to me, it was a revelation. I will describe it from
the perspective of 'goodness'.

We all have an idea of goodness, but there is no objective measure of
good. Each of us measures goodness in our own way. You may think
something is good while someone else may think the same thing is bad. I
started out believing people are naturally good, but drifted to a more
neutral notion as I grew older. Here's why:

Self-preservation is the first law of nature. Before humans reached the
cave-man state they did what they had to do to survive. They existed
like other animals. They killed for food and they killed those who
threatened them. For them, killing was not a moral issue, it was a
matter of survival.

It is likely that these beings existed in herds, that they hunted and
sheltered together, instinctively. If so, they might have lived like
what we refer to as cave-men. However, those beings did not become
'human' until they began to change their animalistic behavior. The
ability to make such a change defines what we call humans.

Assuming cave-men lived in groups, it is reasonable to imagine that the
most effective survivors of the group were the strongest members. We
can also imagine that the strongest could and did take from the
weakest. It is equally likely that the weaker took whatever they could
from the stronger, even if it was only 'leavings', to satisfy their
needs.

But, need is relative. It depends on many factors. In the case of
cave-men, it depended on the availability of food, an individual's size
and/or appetite, the need to provide for mates and offspring, need to
store reserves, and, perhaps, other factors. It is not hard to imagine
that, however primeval, different members of the group had different
needs.

When these beings started to change their animalistic behavior, when
they began to 'think', there is a high likelihood that their thoughts
related to their needs. At some point, those thoughts expanded to
include opinions or judgments about the needs of other individuals in
the group. The concepts of 'good' and 'bad' must have developed in this
way.

At some point in the existence of cave-men, the weaker members of the
community recognized that, since they did not have the strength to take
from the stronger members by themselves, they needed the help of others
if they were to survive. It would not have been difficult for the
weaker members to recognize other members of the group who also suffered
by their weakness. In some way, these weaker members banded together
to limit the domination of the stronger. That banding together was the
start of what we call civilization.

What is not stated, but must be recognized, is that the stronger members
were members of the same group. They did not stand idly by and allow
the weaker members to take from them. They participated in finding a
solution, using their strength to assert 'ownership' to protect as much
of what was 'theirs' as they could.

Ownership was claimed by the strong and the attribution of greed was
laid by the weak. This is the most important, but least acknowledged,
aspect of the relationships which led to the origin and structure of
civilization t. Civilization sprung from the need of the weak to
curtail the power of the strong.

If this is a reasonable estimate of the origin of civilization, several things stand out:

The driving force for civilization
(the organization of society) is the need to restrain the strongest
members of the group. If the weaker members of the group do not feel
threatened by the stronger, there is no need to organize.

Morality,
or the concept of 'good and bad', can not exist in the absence of
intelligent thought. The squirrel, when he stores nuts for the winter,
does not ask himself if he'd be wrong to store one more. If he finds
another and feels the need for it, he takes it. For animals, there is
no issue of good or bad, and the concept of 'greed' does not exist. A
moral sense is a mark of intelligence.

The
threat the weaker members of the original society felt had to result
from deprivation of the resources needed for existence (probably
food). If the stronger were perceived as taking more than they needed
while the weaker suffered, that condition must have been characterized
as 'bad'.

The mechanism society
uses to restrict bad behavior is force. By definition, a weaker member
can not control a stronger one. But, several weaker members, in unison,
have enough power to control even the strongest. In this sense,
civilization is a banding together of the members of a group to gain the
strength needed to control members exhibiting 'bad' behavior.

When
discussing these relationships, we use sophisticated terms to
differentiate forms of undesirable behavior. Thus, we call the taking
of more than one needs 'greed'. This tempts us to say civilization
developed to limit greed. However, the initial banding together of the
weak must surely have been to limit the power of the stronger members of
the group, not to penalize them but to ensure the survival of the
weaker members.

The evolution of
the power of the stronger members has been characterized by increasing
sophistication in the way leaders (i.e., the strongest) exercised their
power, as described in a passage in "The Story of Civilization", by Will
Durant: "Slowly
the increasing complexity of tools and trades subjected the unskilled
or weak to the skilled or strong; every invention was a new weapon in
the hands of the strong, and further strengthened them in their mastery
and use of the weak."

The
civilizing influence of the weak in countering the excesses of the
strong is always reactive. The weak must identify the strong (and the effects of their strength) before they can band together to limit the power of the stronger members of society.

Over time, as the level of sophistication increased, the strong issued
edicts and established rites that provided a color of right for their
actions. In modern times, in a notable application of the art of
sophistry, they developed political institutions that appear to empower the weak while in fact increasing the mastery of the strong.
One conclusion we can draw from this is that we must question the
institutions put in place by our leaders. They are the people most
inclined to enslave us.

~~~o~~~ ~~~o~~~ ~~~o~~~

One of the most powerful tools the strong use to influence the weak is our 'will-to-believe'.
The significance of the will-to-believe is not readily apparent, yet it
ranks close to the will-to-survive in its influence on our lives. The
will-to-believe is not a doctrine, it is a human trait. It is a part of
what we are. Since we can't know everything, we believe what we are
told about matters beyond our ken. Current instances abound, but more
remote examples illustrate the force of this trait with greater clarity,
thus:

If we are that told our emperor descends from the sun god, we believe it.

If we are told to dance in a certain way to please the rain god, we dance.

If
we are told our king rules by divine right, we accept that doctrine.
Not all of us, perhaps, but enough of us that the force of our combined
belief is palpable.

Why do we believe these things? We don't believe them because they are self-evident, we believe them because they are not.
We believe such things because they are given to us as explanations for
some of the inexplicable phenomena that surround us. We do not
understand the phenomena ourselves, but we are willing to assume others
more gifted than ourselves do understand matters that baffle us. We
accept their assertions, in part, because we haven't the knowledge to
refute them.

You may not, in 2013, believe in an emperors' divinity, or the power of
the rain dance, or the divine right of kings. But you do know that such
ideas had a profound influence when they were in vogue. To understand
why they were so influential, you must imagine yourself living when
these ideas were accepted dogma.

If you had lived in the American Southwest 600 years ago, would you have
danced for the rain god? Were you a Japanese citizen in 900 A.D.,
would you have worshiped your emperor? Were you a Parisian in the 14th
century, would you have endorsed the divine right of kings? In each
case, almost certainly so.

More than dance or worship or endorse, you would have believed.
You would have 'known' the customs and beliefs of your time were right
and proper. If your dance failed to bring forth rain, you would have
been sure, not that your belief was wrong, but that you and your people
had failed to please the rain god.

The strength of a belief is not dependent upon the soundness of the
precept but on the intensity of the will-to-believe. While one may
quibble with the label 'a will-to-believe', I've been unable to find a
better term to explain the driving force behind Sinn Fein, Nazis, witch
hunters, Kamikaze pilots, followers of the Reverend Jones, Palestinians,
and those imbued with religious fervor.

The will-to-believe is not only powerful, it is strange. It tends to be
accompanied by an absolute certainty that which is believed is also
true. We start exercising our will-to-believe to fill the gap formed by
our lack of knowledge, and then leap directly from ignorance to absolute certainty.

It is even stranger that this progression from lack of knowledge
continues on through absolute certainty to destructiveness. For it
would be hard to imagine greater destructive force than that wielded by
Sinn Feiners, Nazis, witch hunters, Kamikaze pilots, Reverend Jones,
Palestinians, and those permeated with religious fervor. The result of
their terrible certainty is havoc and death; the destruction of
themselves and the destruction of others. In fact, the most destructive
words in any language are:

I BELIEVE!!!

In modern society, this trait inhibits our ability to question our
leaders. In the United States, we want to believe we live under
government "of the people, by the people, for the people". We've been
told we have the greatest government on earth for so long, in so many
ways, by so many people, that we want to believe it. We do not want to
examine the institutions that control our government.

In America, political parties control the choice of candidates the
people may vote for in our so-called 'free elections'. When the people
vote for candidates chosen by political parties, control of the
government is vested, not in the voters, but in the parties that chose
the candidates.

A party-based political system is the antithesis of democracy. It
expresses our status as subjects of those who defined our options -
those who control the political parties. As long as political parties
select the candidates for public office, the people are helpless because
'those who control the options control the outcome'.

The ability to choose from options provided by political parties does
not give us control of our government, but, because we have a
will-to-believe we have the best government on earth, we blind ourselves
to our own subjugation.

~~~o~~~ ~~~o~~~ ~~~o~~~

On a personal rather than a society-wide level, insofar as the concept
of natural human goodness is concerned, the concepts of good and bad
can't exist for a single individual. They can only exist in terms of
others. We exist in a constant and ever-changing mixture of good and
bad. The choices we make flow from our understanding of that mixture,
influenced by our individual characteristics. The less powerful among
us may consider actions good that are abhorrent to the more powerful,
but they are neither good nor bad unless they affect others and their
goodness or badness depends on the effect they have on others.

A Japanese friend once told me, "Evil heart is something we learn after
we are born", and I agree. Good heart is, too. For each of us, the
idea of good and bad grows as we develop. Initially, we see those who
gratify our wishes as good and those who deny us what we want as bad.
We exist in a constant and ever-changing mixture of good and bad,
starting with our parents who supply our needs (good) and control us
(bad). But we soon realize good and bad are much more complex than
that. The choices we make flow from our understanding of that mixture,
influenced by our individual characteristics. The less powerful among
us may consider actions good that are abhorrent to the more powerful,
but they are neither good nor bad unless they affect others and their
goodness or badness depend on the effect they have on others.

That, it seems to me, is the essence of good and bad. It also describes human nature. It is certainly not profound.

~~~o~~~ ~~~o~~~ ~~~o~~~

The significant revelation of this line of thought is that it is natural
for the most powerful members of society to put their own interest
above the interests of others. The tendency of the strong to dominate
the weak is as natural a part of the human as breathing. We are unwise
to expect leaders to act differently. Failure to understand that simple
precept leaves us ill-equipped to improve society.

Since leaders are an important part of society, we must devise a means
of selecting leaders that benefits all of us. The institutions we use
to select our leaders must be designed to recognize and protect us from
the natural imperfections of the human spirit. Hence, we must recognize
our own weaknesses and harness them. In other words, our political
institutions must be designed to temper our 'bad' traits with our 'good'
ones.

A well-designed political institution will recognize that some people
are better advocates of the public interest than others. It will be
designed, not to divide the public into blocs but to find the best
advocates of the common interest and raise them to leadership positions
as the people's representatives. To meet that challenge, given the
range of public issues and the way each individual's interest in
political matters varies over time, an effective electoral process must
examine the entire electorate during each election cycle, seeking the
people's best advocates. It must let every voter influence the outcome
of each election to the best of their desire and ability, and it must
ensure that those selected as representatives are disposed to serve the
public interest.

The political process must encourage the absorption of diverse
interests, reducing them to their essential element: their effect on
the entire community. It should have no platforms, no ideology. The
only question is, which members of the community are the most attuned to
the needs of society and have the qualities required to advocate the
common good.

Such an institution can best be developed by atomizing the electorate
into thousands, or, in larger communities, millions of randomly chosen
very small groups. Each group advances the best advocate of the group's
interests who are then randomly assigned to very small groups made up
of the selectees from other groups. The process continues until a
desired number of public officials are chosen. Each tiny group provides
a slight bias toward the common interest. As the levels advance, the
cumulative effect of this small bias overwhelms special interests
seeking their private gain. It leads, inexorably, to the selection of
representatives who advocate the interests of the entire community.

You will understand that this is just a start at laying the groundwork
for formulating an alternative to the system we currently endure. We
can only hope to attain such a political structure when the thoughtful
people among us add their insights to harness our nature for the benefit
of all.

An acquaintance expressed the opinion that a progressive gross receipts
tax on corporations would "kill jobs". This is a counterargument:

I've lived long enough to see the results of unrestrained corporate
growth and believe your assessment inaccurate. When I was young, we had
a small knitting mill in town (Warsaw, New York, population about
1,500). That mill, in addition to the direct employment of 80 or so of
our townspeople, also provided employment for another 20 or so folks in
town: The sandwich shop on the corner, a couple of local pickup and
delivery services, the bank, of course, and. to some extent, the shops
patronized by the the mill's employees.

That may seem like pretty small stuff - and it was - but it was typical
of thousands of small businesses throughout the country. Over the past
50 years or so, those small companies disappeared, replaced by a few
large producers. The sources of employment that were lost were not just
the small companies but the support services, too, the little
restaurants, the banks, the pickup and delivery services, the repair
shops that maintained the equipment. They all disappeared, too.

This process pervaded the country. The automotive industry was marked
by the loss of auto supply stores and maintenance shops as the
manufacturers sought to control their markets - to the extent that it
now costs $100 to replace the ignition key for my car.

Perhaps a better example is the brewing industry. This table shows the
percentage of beer produced in the United States by the top 10 brewers:

1950 - 38%
1960 - 52%
1970 - 69%
1980 - 93%

If you happen to check the details (link below), you'll note the
increasing difference between the largest brewer and the tenth largest.
In 1950, the largest brewer produced about 3.5 million barrels more
than the tenth largest. In 1980, the largest brewer produced 46 million
barrels more than the tenth largest, and that disparity grew to more
than 90 million barrels by 1997.

The extraordinary difficulty of understanding the relationships between
individual producers and society is illustrated by the effects of
marketing. Behavioral scientists taught our commercial leaders how to
influence the public and they do so with great precision.

Furthermore, the mushrooming of mass communication during the past 100
years has allowed honing and refining the manipulation of the public so
that it is now a standard feature of our lives. During the 1950-1980
period, the total beer consumption more than doubled from 82,830,137 to
176,311,699 barrels, while population only grew about fifty percent over
the same period. This shows the enormous success of the application of
the principles of behavioral science to the marketing of beer.

You can say this was destined to happen as the economy evolved, and
there is merit in that argument. But, evolution is not the problem, the
problem is that ﻿corporate growth turned cancerous. It stopped responding to society's needs and mushroomed at the expense of the people rather than in harmony with them.

Our elected representatives, needing corporate money to finance their
campaigns, let the most aggressive companies grow without limit,
ultimately becoming ﻿"Too Big To Fail".
The executives of these companies are very good at what they do and the
growth of mass communications has made their manipulating influence
inescapable. Since the goals of these parasites are seldom in concert
with the best interest of the humans among us, the ease with which they
accomplish their goals scares me. I'll be leaving this earth before too
many more years have passed, but I can't help thinking about the
terrible legacy I'm leaving for my children and grandchildren.

Throughout nature there are moderating influences to inhibit excesses,
predators of all kinds are kept in check by other predators. At
present, in our society, we have no such moderating influence on
predatory corporations. There is no force to prevent 'excessive' growth
- in part because there is no way to define 'excessive' growth. The
idea of a progressive tax on gross receipts is that it, very gradually,
applies an inhibiting force the makes excessive growth less productive.

A progressive tax on gross receipts makes the acquisition of competitors
less appealing for large companies. It provides a counterbalance that
discourages monopolistic growth after the maximum economies of scale
have been realized. It enhances competition immeasurably by preventing
the suffocation of smaller businesses, thus increasing not only the
direct employment of the surviving companies but the indirect employment
of the support services that supply them and their employees. It
further blesses society by enlisting corporate support in fighting
inflation.

An acquaintance asked if the idea of a progressive gross receipts tax should be implemented worldwide.

I think that's a valid implication. Even so, there is a wide difference between what 'should' be done and
what 'can' be done. Seeking to accomplish such a reform world-wide
would be a major challenge. It is better to concentrate in an area
where success is possible. In the United States, companies deemed "Too
Big To Fail" provide the impetus for action (although, judging by the
underwhelming response to this question, that may be an optimistic
assessment).

Corporations, like other organisms, consider self-preservation the first
law of nature. Though the methods of self-preservation vary, they are
generally applauded as "survival of the fittest". However, carried to
extremes, self-preservation can be destructive of the preserved entity's
habitat. Beneficial though Darwinism may be in a purely theoretical
sense, if our society and our environment are the specifics being
destroyed, we must do what we can to prevent it.

re: ﻿"...
if tax were to be imposed on resource usage - then who would own the
resources? The government? How will that be done then, as at the
moment all resources are in the hands of corporations?"

Correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I believe, in the United States,
the resources are owned by the people and allocated by the government.
The problem is that, because the large corporations control the purse
strings of the political parties and the parties control the choice of
candidates for public office, the large corporations control the
government and are able to demand, and get, the resources they desire.
If the allocation is improper, the only way we can correct it is by
devising an electoral process that lets the people choose the best of
their number to advocate their interests in the government so resources
are allocated for the benefit of the people rather than the
corporations.

re: ﻿"Just trying to get a better understanding of how this 'gross receipts tax' would work"

The problem of corporations "Too Big To Fail"
is a contemporary issue in the United States. The question of a
progressive gross receipts tax was posed because I'm not sure why this
solution to the problem is not being discussed. Among its many
advantages, a progressive tax on gross receipts has the remarkable
quality that, when a corporation grows beyond an economically
justifiable size, the tax acts to protect the public interest without
additional regulation.

re: ﻿"...
probably the reason why it has not yet been considered by the
government is that we are still putting money and profit/price over what
would be best for life on earth and thus also ourselves."

Is not the reason more likely to be "because
the large corporations control the purse strings of the political
parties and the parties control the choice of candidates for public
office"? Does this not put control of government in the hands of
the very people who put "money and price" above what is best for life
on earth? Theodore Roosevelt, in his State of the Union Address on
December 3, 1906[1], warned the American people of the "unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics". The circumstances we now condemn flow directly from that unholy alliance. We would do well to break its grasp on our government.

re: ﻿"I
mean it would only make sense to make sure that we don't use up all the
resources and pollute the environment through what we use and produce
in our system - yet that seems to be a point of common sense that has
not actually hit the major players in this world - who ever that may be
that is in charge of resource distribution and management."

In looking for sense in the modern world, one must not overlook the fact
that, whatever the judicial rationale supporting the decision that
corporations are persons, corporations are not human. They have no
natural life-cycle of birth, adolescence, maturity, death. They have no
morality except that of pursuing their own interest. They have no
future, except the extent to which they can self-perpetuate. Using up
all the resources and polluting the environment have no meaning for
corporations.

We can say that those who direct the operations of corporations are
human and 'should' want to avoid using up all the resources and
polluting the environment, but when those worries are set against the
almost incalculable benefits of power and recompense corporate
executives reap, such concerns are minor, indeed.

Probably the most difficult thing to accept is that these executives are
not vile persons. Most humans would act as they do, however much we
would like to believe otherwise. The pursuit of self-interest is
universal. The ability to suppress immediate gratification for future
welfare, particularly when the threat is based on reason rather than
experience and the welfare is of generations yet unborn, is not
abundant. It exists in sufficient quantity to benefit humanity, but is
widely dispersed. We've yet to devise a means of aggregating that
quality, so vital to the benefit of society.

re:
"So, as long as we live in a system that is founded upon this crazy idea
that profit comes before life - government will never make decisions
that will actually really benefit the people, but will always make
decisions that benefit only the share-holders of major corporations -
and as you say, are the ones who are also in office, as the ones who
will profit."

And that's the point. The problems we endure flow directly from our
political system. If we wish to live in a system that is not "founded
upon this crazy idea that profit comes before life", we must devise a
political process that filters the large number of citizens to find
those with the qualities necessary to advance our common interest. We
will probably find that a central feature of the process will be
harnessing human nature by making probity a necessary quality for those
who wish to achieve public office.

Lest I be misunderstood, I do not know what is best for life on earth.
What I know is, the people most disposed to seek such a goal exist among
us. We must devise a means of finding them and raising them to
leadership positions. It is unwise to allow control of government to
fall into the hands of corporate executives who profit by the laws the
government enacts.

It would be nice if there were a site where this topic could be explored
in detail and, hopefully, attract other thoughtful people to help
examine such questions objectively. Quora does not support the in-depth
investigation of serious issues and, being of modest internet ability, I
haven't found a site that does. If you know of one, I'd like to
examine this issue and some of its natural extensions in detail.

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Sadly,
this question perpetuates a faulty assumption that goes back at least
as far as Plato: the notion that the people (American, or otherwise)
are an amorphous mass that can be categorized as a single unit rather
than, as is so obviously the case, a multitude of highly differentiated
individuals: some good, some bad; some skilled, some unskilled; some
with integrity, some deceitful; some leaders, some followers; some
sociable, some unfriendly; some brilliant, some dull.

In fact,
the people constitute a vast pool of talent containing individuals with
the ability to resolve public issues in the public interest. The
problem we face is finding those individuals and raising them to
leadership positions. As with any complex problem, the key to solving
it is to break it down. Politics is no different. The challenge of
democracy is to sift through the many types of individuals among us,
select those those best suited to serve as advocates of the common
interest, and raise them to public office.

The tragedy of thinking the people "too stupid for Democracy" is that it leads to the fallacious notion that the people are a formless throng whose only
political right is to vote their approval or disapproval of choices
made by the vested interests that control the nation's political
infrastructure.

In the same way that we gradually came to
acknowledge the earth is not flat, we will someday see the people, not
as a formless bunch of dullards, but as a pool of individuals, some with
the leadership qualities that benefit society. Devising a means of
selecting them and elevating them to leadership positions is a challenge
we have so far failed to meet.

We can not wait for a champion to arise and ordain such a process for us because true democracy offers no rewards for individuals or interests.
Instead, the concept must find fertile soil among the people, take
root, be cultivated, and grow in a process of gradual evolution. The
seeding and cultivation of this vital crop falls to those who envision a
better future for society.

Can we venture outside our shell of
unreason to conceive a means by which all the people participate in the
political process to the full extent of their desire and ability, while
prizing factions without ceding the control of government to them? Can
we devise a plan that provides a proper cure for the sick political
system we presently endure?

Not only do I believe we can, I don't even think it's difficult, but it does require seeing the potential that's all around us.

I've
been asked to answer whether or not 'voter suppression' is effective.
To better understand the question and in an effort to be responsive to
the request, I've reviewed the questions Quora deems related. Based on
that review, I don't feel competent to answer the question as asked. I
have no personal knowledge of voter suppression at the polls and cannot
judge its effectiveness.

However, in a broader sense, voters are
suppressed in the United States because they have no mechanism by which
they can proclaim their own political choices. This form of voter
suppression is exceptionally effective.

In America, the issues
and candidates the people are allowed to vote for are controlled by
political parties, and a party-based political system is profoundly
undemocratic. It expresses the people's status as subjects of those who
define the options they may vote for; they are subjects of those who
control the political parties. As long as parties control the choices
on which the electorate is allowed to vote, the people are helpless
because 'those who control the options control the outcome'.

In
such a political environment the question of whether or not qualified
voters are "being kept from determining the outcome of elections" is
moot because they have no effective participation in the selection of
the choices on which they vote.

Until qualified voters have a way
to participate in the selection of their representatives in government,
their participation in maintaining the existing power structure can
have no validity. Until we enact an effective means for the entire
electorate to participate in the selection of issues and candidates, to the full extent of each individual's desire and ability, we cannot stop the immense financial interests that control our political process from plundering us and our environment.

Viet Vu said: "It needs to be noted that the firms choose to innovate and
compete because it believes that it will, one day, benefit from a
monopolistic profit - the highest level of profit any firm can make."

Firms
seek profit because that's their reason for being. They may dream of
monopoly, but not achieving it does not dampen their ardor for seeking
it.

Viet Vu said: "It is certainly a good idea to
create equality but a balance needs to be made between how free we let
the entrepreneurs pursue monopoly and how tight we need to manage it
(anti-trust laws)"

Balance is attained by making the
Gross Receipts Tax progressive. It then operates automatically,
providing the lightest amount of management possible. It eliminates the
need for anti-trust laws and encourages entrepreneurs by ensuring they
are not squeezed out of business by monopolies.

The tax starts at
a very low level and gradually increases as the size of the enterprise
grows. To give you an idea of the concept, this example assumes the tax
starts at 2% on gross receipts of one million dollars and increases by
1% each time the gross receipts increase by one order of magnitude (one
decimal position):

The
tax will bring equilibrium to the economy because taxes are passed
through to the consumer. It does no injury to firms whose size is
reasonable and proper. At the same time, firms whose size is not
economically justified price themselves out of the market.

Viet
Vu said: "Monopoly is bad for the economy overall and yet it is still
what keeps the firms competing in hopes that it will reach that level
some day. Destroying this incentive may ... mean a reduced level of firm
activities."

Monopoly is not only bad for the economy,
it is destructive - as shown by the recent financial collapse that
threatened the world. However much firms wish for monopoly, they will
continue to innovate and compete in search of profit. That's why they
exist. Preventing companies from becoming "Too Big To Fail" will not limit innovation and competition, it will encourage entrepreneurs and broaden participation in the economy.

~~~o~~~ ~~~o~~~ ~~~o~~~

Kim
Amourette asked: "Wouldn't that imply that this tax should be
implemented in every system world wide - as companies can always go
oversees for earth resources and human resources?"

I
think that's a valid implication. Corporations, like other organisms,
consider self-preservation the first law of nature. Though the methods
of self-preservation vary, they are generally applauded as "survival of the fittest".
However, carried to extremes, self-preservation can be destructive of
the preserved entity's habitat. Beneficial though Darwinism may be in a
purely theoretical sense, if our society and our environment are the
specifics being destroyed, we must do what we can to prevent it.

Even so, there is a wide difference between what should be done and what can
be done. Seeking to accomplish such a reform world-wide would be a
major challenge. It is better to concentrate in an area where success
is possible. In the United States, companies deemed "Too Big To Fail"provide
the impetus for action (although, judging by the underwhelming response
to this question, that may be an optimistic assessment).

Kim
Amourette asked: "... if tax were to be imposed on resource usage -
then who would own the resources? The government? How will that be done
then, as at the moment all resources are in the hands of corporations?"

Correct
me if I'm wrong on this, but I believe, in the United States, the
resources are owned by the people and allocated by the government. The
problem is that, because the large corporations control the purse
strings of the political parties and the parties control the choice of
candidates for public office, the large corporations control the
government and are able to demand, and get, the resources they desire.
If the allocation is improper, the only way we can correct it is by
devising an electoral process that lets the people choose the best of
their number to advocate their interests in the government so resources
are allocated for the benefit of the people rather than the
corporations.

Kim Amourette said: "Just trying to get a better understanding of how this 'gross receipts tax' would work"

The
Gross Receipts Tax would work by increasing the tax rate on
corporations as their gross receipts increase. The problem of
businesses becoming "Too Big To Fail" is a contemporary
issue in the United States. The question was posed because I'm not sure
why this solution to the problem is not being discussed. Among its
many advantages, a progressive tax on gross receipts has the remarkable
quality that, when a corporation grows beyond an economically
justifiable size, the tax acts to protect the public interest without
additional regulation.

Kim Amourette said: "...
probably the reason why it has not yet been considered by the government
is that we are still putting money and profit/price over what would be
best for life on earth and thus also ourselves."

Is not the reason more likely to be "because
the large corporations control the purse strings of the political
parties and the parties control the choice of candidates for public
office"? Does this not put control of government in the hands of the very people who put "money and price"
above what is best for life on earth? Theodore Roosevelt, in his State
of the Union Address on December 3, 1906[1], warned the American people
of the "unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics".
The circumstances we now condemn flow directly from that unholy
alliance. We would do well to break its grasp on our government.

Kim
Amourette said: "I mean it would only make sense to make sure that we
don't use up all the resources and pollute the environment through what
we use and produce in our system - yet that seems to be a point of
common sense that has not actually hit the major players in this world -
who ever that may be that is in charge of resource distribution and
management."

In looking for sense in the modern world,
one must not overlook the fact that, whatever the judicial rationale
supporting the decision that corporations are persons, corporations are
not human. They have no natural life-cycle of birth, adolescence,
maturity, death. They have no morality except that of pursuing their
own interest. They have no future, except the extent to which they can
self-perpetuate. Using up all the resources and polluting the
environment have no meaning for corporations.

We can say that those who direct the operations of corporations are human and should
want to avoid using up all the resources and polluting the environment,
but when those worries are set against the almost incalculable benefits
of power and recompense corporate executives enjoy, such concerns are
minor, indeed.

Probably the most difficult thing to accept is
that these executives are not vile persons. Most humans would act as
they do, however much we would like to believe otherwise. The pursuit
of self-interest is universal. The ability to suppress immediate
gratification for future welfare, particularly when the threat is based
on reason rather than experience and the welfare is of generations yet
unborn, is not abundant. It exists in sufficient quantity to benefit
humanity, but is widely dispersed. We've yet to devise a means of
aggregating that quality, so vital to the benefit of society.

Kim
Amourette said: "So, as long as we live in a system that is founded
upon this crazy idea that profit comes before life - government will
never make decisions that will actually really benefit the people, but
will always make decisions that benefit only the share-holders of major
corporations - and as you say, are the ones who are also in office, as
the ones who will profit."

And that's the point. The
problems we endure flow directly from our political system. If we wish
to live in a system that is not "founded upon this crazy idea that profit comes before life",
we must devise a political process that filters the large number of
citizens to find those with the qualities necessary to advance our
common interest. We will probably find that a central feature of the
process will be harnessing human nature by making probity a necessary
quality for those who wish to achieve public office.

Lest I
be misunderstood, I do not know what is best for life on earth. What I
know is, we must find the people most disposed to seek those
conditions. It is unwise to allow control of government to fall into
the hands of corporate executives who profit by the laws the government
enacts.

I appreciate Kim Amourette's interest in this
question. It would be nice if there were a site where it could be
explored in detail and, hopefully, attract other thoughtful people to
help examine such questions objectively. Quora does not support the
in-depth investigation of serious issues as can be seen by the need to
repeat these comments at the "Answer" level. Being of modest internet
ability, I haven't found a site that encourages careful, objective
examination of the serious questions that face us. If you know of one,
I'd like to examine this issue and some of its natural extensions in
detail.

I'm
pleased to see I'm not the only person who agrees with the answer
posted by Yogan Wayra Zadronzny Barrientos. His post has inspired an
unusually high degree of approval. However, devising a real plan of
change is a daunting task.

If we can conceive a better political
system than the one that brought us to our present pass, it might be
possible to avoid the emotional (and possibly violent) rejection that is
likely to ensue. History is strewn with similar periods of excess, all
marked by some form of greed (usually greed for power), and all ending
in revolution.

I think scholarly discourse is the best way to
avoid a recurrence of the cycle, but achieving it turns out to be more
difficult than I anticipated. The 200-plus years of our nation's
existence have created innumerable tentacles of habit and belief that
have a firm hold on our minds. To loosen that grip we must pry back its
fingers, one by one, with irrefutable logic.

The fingers can be
pried back by a public critique of politics by people holding different
points of view, who wish to determine the best form of government,
guided by reasoned arguments. Their purpose would not be to debate the
issues but to reason to rational conclusions. Frankly, I don't have a
clue how to encourage others to engage in such a detailed examination of
our political infrastructure.

Like
beauty, freedom is in the eye of the beholder. A prisoner with access
to a well-stocked library may feel free while a well-paid executive may
feel trapped by the demands of office.

Because of the diversity
of human needs and perceptions, I don't believe a categorical response
to this question is possible. There is a general consensus that we must
give up a portion of our freedom to enjoy the benefits of society, so I
think we can say the degree of freedom of a society is best judged by a
majority of the members of that society.

That's not a definitive
answer, though, because some members of the society may feel improperly
constrained while others feel they are enjoying complete freedom.

The primary force fighting against democracy is human nature. Whether or not you consider human nature a 'political force'
is an open question, but it's the place to start. The progress of
democracy is sporadic because learning to harness human nature in a
productive fashion is a slow process.

Democracy will be more
successful when we devise a method of selecting political leaders that
makes integrity an important character trait. If integrity is to be
important, it must be vital to those who choose the candidates. When we
devise a candidate selection process that ensures office-seekers are
carefully examined by peers seeking the same office, candidates will
have to exhibit not only their ability but their probity, if they wish
to be selected.

There
are, in my view, three fundamental flaws in our government: the way we
maintain our laws, the way we tax, and the way we select our
representatives. Until we improve the way we select our
representatives, we cannot sunset bad laws or improve our tax code.

(edit) As requested by Tom Byron, I offer the following:

1)
The way we maintain our laws: Nothing in our Constitution requires
that laws be sunsetted. As a result of that omission, a law passed by a
bare majority of our representatives (and, possibly, desired by a
minority of our citizens) stays on the books ad infinitum. A less
lamentable method would be limits on the life of a law based on the
lowest percentage of approval by which it passes either house of
Congress (or the various legislatures). Revisiting marginal laws allows
the people to express their approval or disapproval based on their
experience with the law.

For example:

Less than 52% approval, a life of 1 year 52% to 55% approval, a life of 2 years 55% to 65% approval, a life of 5 years Over 65% approval, a life of 10 years

2)
The way we tax: Taxes should be proportional to the benefits the taxed
entity realizes because of its citizenship. Taxes should not be
preferential; they should allow no exemptions or exceptions.

3)
The way we select our representatives: At present, political parties
have usurped the right to name the candidates for public office, and
those who control the options control the result. The people's only
recourse is to vote for a candidate selected by a party. Since the goal
of parties is to advance their own interest, they choose unscrupulous
people by design. If we are to improve our government, the first step
must be for the people to select the best of their number to represent
them in their government.

Corporations
are entities formed to exploit the physical and human resources of a
community. They provide a means of attracting large amounts of capital
to finance large projects. Some are beneficial and some are a detriment
to the society that hosts them, but it is not easy to tell which is
which because of the myths surrounding their operations.

The
suggestion that corporations exist for the benefit of their shareholders
is false; shareholders merely hope to profit from the operation.
Corporations exist for the well being of those who control them; the
individuals who benefit from the airplanes, three-martini lunches,
yachts, season tickets and luxury boxes at sports venues, limousines,
chauffeurs and plush offices afforded corporate executives, free of
taxation and passed off as business expenses.

Corporation are not
taxed like humans and are allowed to become "Too Big To Fail" because,
since the inception of the income tax, the sophistry of people like Mr.
Richter have successfully influenced our lawmakers.

The
folks on the election-methods mailing list on that site discuss a wide
variety of voting systems. If you check them out, I think you'll find
that, however sophisticated they may be, they are unintelligible to the
layman. Worse, from my perspective, they fail to address the most
fundamental problems of democracy:

* They do not seek a practical
method of letting everyone participate in the electoral process to the
full extent of each individual's desire and ability. Instead, they seek
to empower political parties, which empowers the party leaders, and is
the antithesis of democracy.

* They do not recognize that
political parties can not serve the public interest because the party
leaders are committed to advancing the interests of only a portion of
the electorate.

* They do not even address the questions of the
ability and integrity of candidates for public office, when those
questions should be the focus of the candidate selection process.

There are other concerns, but those of the ones I find most unsettling.

I'm
not sure a democratic voting system needs to be sophisticated. We know
there are among us a multitude of individuals with the ability and the
integrity to advocate our common interest. What we lack, at the moment,
is a method of seeking among ourselves to find those people and raise
them to public office as our representatives. One method you may find
interesting is a proposal of mine. You can find it at:

To
me, Practical Democracy is not particularly sophisticated but I do
think it both subtle and powerful. It lets those in the electorate who
do not wish to participate drop out, it ensures that those who seek
public office are carefully examined by their peers before they
advance, it eliminates the influence of money on the electoral process,
it eliminates political campaigning, and it lets parties advance their
best advocates in a way that gives the advocates ample time to explain
the public benefit of their perspective.

The
most fundamental policy that prevents voters from electing officials
who will represent them is letting political parties dictate our
political actions. George Washington warned us of the danger of
factions in his Farewell Address[1]. Yet, factions (parties) grabbed
power because we, the people, didn't understand how they corrupt the
political process.

Instead of uniting the people and advancing
our common interests, parties incite antagonism among the people in
order to divide us and increase their power. They dominate us by the
most basic principle of conquest: Divide and Conquer.

Democracy
is supposed to be a bottom-up concept; political power is vested in the
people and rises, by their choice, to the officials they elect. We
have yet to achieve that arrangement of our political existence because
Washington's "cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men" were "enabled to
subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins
of government". They created top-down political organizations that let
them set the agendas and choose the candidates for which the people
vote. These structures corrupt the democratic process because

Those who set the options, control the outcome!

Not
many people realize that letting political parties select the
candidates for public office is profoundly undemocratic. We must help
them see that, as long as we let political parties choose the candidates
for public office, they will select people who advance the party's
interest, not ours.

If we are to elect officials who will
represent us, we must start by devising an electoral process that lets
each of us participate in the selection process to the full extent of
our desire and ability.

I'm
not qualified to comment on politics in India. I can, however, respond
to your interesting question about democracy, from the perspective of
an American citizen.

The question is interesting because it calls
attention to the meaning of democracy. There is an enormous difference
between true democracy - government of the people,by the people, for the people - and the pseudo-democracies that engulf us.

The
pseudo-democracies are actually oligarchies because the governments are
controlled by political parties and the parties are controlled by a
small number of people. These institutions are profoundly
undemocratic. They raise unscrupulous people to public office by
controlling the options the people are allowed to vote on, and ...

... those who control the options control the outcome!!!

This
travesty is working because we have been taught to believe political
parties are 'right' and are inevitable. If we are to achieve genuine
democracy, the first step must be to learn why and how parties pervert
politics.

A major factor in the perversion is political
'campaigning'. Campaigning is a very expensive process and the costs
are corrupting. The parties need immense amounts of money and raise it
by selling their only product - laws.

To make matters worse,
campaigning has a corrosive effect on the candidates. It is a training
course in the art of deception. It is centered on deceit, misdirection
and obfuscation rather than integrity and commitment to the public
interest. Furthermore, campaigners are lionized by their supporters and
suffer the insidious effect of repeatedly proclaiming their own
rectitude. These things have a debilitating effect on the candidate's
character and a destructive effect on society.

The result of this
corrupt process is corrupt politicians. They cannot resolve national
debts. They led the U. S. into war with fictitious threats of Weapons of Mass Destruction.
They maintain laws allowing the growth of huge corporations that suck
trillions of dollars out of the world's economies to the detriment of
the humans among us. They gut and repeal laws that protected us from
monstrous banks and then called them 'Too Big To Fail'. They are, as
Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana said, unable to conduct the people's
business, and, as Senator Ted Kaufman of Delaware said, under the
suffocating influence of money.

To attain the alternative you seek, you must first make clear how and why the systems that claim to be 'democracies'
fail to serve the people. Until a nation understands its political
distress is caused by what we've been taught is 'the best system on
earth', the people will not support a change.

Then you must
devise an electoral process that seeks out the individuals best suited
to resolve the issues of the time. The process must let those who do
not wish to participate step aside, while advancing individuals with the
integrity, the intellect, the energy to serve the public interest.

Don't scoff.

There is no shortage of such people among us. What we lack is the means of seeking them out and raising them to public office.

For
my part, I learn more from those who disagree with me than from those
who don't. However, finding such people merely opens a tiny crack in a
door that must be swung wide if either of us is to benefit from the
experience. Knowledge is gained by discourse between people holding
different points of view who wish to resolve their differences by
reasoned arguments. The purpose is not to debate the issues but to
apply reason to reach rational conclusions. Unfortunately (for me),
Quora does not support the kind of in-depth discussion necessary to
encourage those tiny shifts in perspective that broaden our minds.

The term 'pure democracy' is imprecise, but I'll answer as well as I can.If
the term means public issues are resolved by having everyone in the
electorate 'vote' on proposed solutions, the economic circumstances do
not matter. The organizations most expert in exploiting the media will
sway public opinion to the advantage of the vested interests they
represent, at the expense of the people.If the term means the
people have a mechanism by which they can select their wisest, most
virtuous, and most experienced citizens to lead them, pure democracy
will work equally well in either situation. The people will choose
leaders for their ability to address the circumstances and resolve the
issues that face them. (Obviously, this does not describe the kind of
'democracy' we endure in the United States.)Fred Gohlke

Thank
you for asking, Zach. I don't think it's easy to mitigate the Iron
Law of Oligarchy, but it can be done if the organization recognizes
the danger and takes steps avoid it. That's difficult because those
who had the assertiveness, energy and ability to form the organization
can be expected to oppose provisions that challenge their leadership.

An
early step is to understand that the qualities required to lead a
dynamic, vibrant organization change with time and circumstance. Those
who found the organization may not be the best people to make it
productive. Traditionally, this problem is addressed by having the
membership vote on candidates for leadership positions, a method that
has achieved such sanctity its weaknesses are dismissed.

There
are at least two reasons the traditional 'voting' approach leads
directly to the creation of an oligarchical structure. One is the fact
that those who stand for election are the most assertive individuals
in the organization and another is that, since such elections are
popularity contests, the incumbents have an enormous advantage.

The
only way to counter these flaws is to devise an electoral process that
sifts through the entire membership to seek out those individuals with
the qualities needed to meet contemporary challenges and raise them to
leadership positions. In doing so, those who seek to avoid oligarchy
must recognize that, within their organization, are many people who are
unaware of their leadership talents because they are never placed in a
situation that allowed their exercise. Some of them, when they
discuss current and prospective organizational issues with their peers,
will blossom. They may start out unsure of their ability, but when
their reason is consulted and they learn they can persuade others of
the value of their ideas, they gain confidence. In doing so, they grow
and benefit the entire organization.

[Those interested in
the philosophical underpinnings of this approach can check out Edward
Clayton's excellent description of the Political Philosophy of Alasdair
MacIntyre in The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.]

To
eliminate oligarchs, the leadership selection method must ensure every
member can participate in the process to the full extent of each
individual's desire and ability. That raises the immediate question of
how to give every member of a large group meaningful participation in
the electoral process without chaos. One method is to create very
small groups of randomly chosen members and build a pyramid-like
structure based on their will.

Mitigating the Iron Law of
Oligarchy is, first of all, a matter of recognizing it is an inevitable
result of the traditional method of selecting leaders. The only way
to prevent it is to change the way the leaders are chosen.

Thereafter,
like any other large problem, it can be solved by breaking it down.
The resulting process must guarantee that those who are not accustomed
to the serious discussion of organizational issues are placed in
circumstances that allow and encourage them to participate
meaningfully. The biggest hurdle will be overcoming a flood of
misdirection and obfuscation flowing from those proclaiming the
sanctity of the traditional method.

When
speaking of equality, we must be careful to differentiate between
political equality and economic equality. Political equality means we
all have the right to participate in the political process to the full
extent of our desire and ability. Economic equality is a different
matter.

When considering political equality, the most powerful force we can use to make democracy more egalitarian is our minds - but we may have to change them a bit:

* We think of 'the people' is a single entity.

* We are sure the people can't resist media manipulation.

* We are sure the people want to choose sides on political issues.

* We are sure voting means visiting polls and casting ballots.

* We are sure active political participation for all is impractical.

* We are sure politics is a dirty business.

There
are many thoughtful comments on the question. The insights described
in these comments show the kind of reflective qualities we must bring to
bear if we are to have equal political rights and opportunities for all
people.

Unfortunately, Quora does not encourage the kind of
comprehensive examination required to conduct such a deep analysis. If
anyone can suggest a site where such an in-depth discourse is possible
and would like to engage in an exchange of views, please let me know.
In the meantime, I will start the process here. Perhaps these comments
will stimulate additional insights and answers.

COMMENTS:* We
speak of 'the people' as a single entity. Plato, if not others before
him, felt democracy could not work because 'ordinary people' are 'too
easily swayed by the emotional and deceptive rhetoric of ambitious
politicians'. He failed to note that not all people are 'ordinary'. We
need look no further than the high-quality posts on Quora to see that.
Yet, Plato's faulty view of democracy survived and still dominates
political thought.

We could look at 'the people' differently. We
could see them not as a single entity but as a multitude of
individuals: some good, some bad; some skilled, some unskilled; some
with integrity, some deceitful; some brilliant, some dull; some
sociable, some unfriendly; some excellent advocates of the public
interest, some egocentric manipulators. From this, we might conclude
there is no shortage of individuals with the integrity and ability we
want in the people who represent us in our government, and decide we
need an electoral process that lets us sift through the multitudes to
find them.

* We are sure the people can't resist media
manipulation. Yet, when we look at ourselves, we see we can resist some
(if not all) of it, particularly when it panders to a view we abhor.
Media manipulation works because it is one-way communication, designed
by professional behavioral scientists to inspire an emotional reaction.
Emotional reactions are personal and unthinking. Our resistance to
manipulation increases when we think about the assertions and discuss
them with our peers because we expose the deceptions and obfuscations
that characterize such material. This might lead us to integrate a way
for the people to discuss political issues - before they vote - into our
political infrastructure.

* We are sure the people want to
choose sides on political issues. We might consider an alternative, the
idea that the people want to advance the common interest. A few
academics are starting to look at the possibility that the people
actually prefer seeking consensus. Esterling, Fung and Lee[1] found
that when people discuss political issues in small groups, the
discussion raises both the knowledge level of the participants and their
satisfaction with the results of their deliberations. Pogrebinschi[2]
found that "... policies for minority groups deliberated in the national
conferences tend to be crosscutting as to their content. The policies
tend to favor more than one group simultaneously ...".

* We are
sure voting means visiting polls and casting ballots for options chosen
by political parties. When we look at voting from a different
perspective, we see such a conception is enslaving because those who
control the options control the outcome. This may inspire us to devise a
voting method in which the people discuss their political concerns
among themselves and decide the issues on which they will vote.

*
We are sure active political participation for all is impractical.
When we approach the matter from the perspective of finding the jewels
among our peers, the problem is less intimidating. Such an alternate
view allows us to imagine a process that, knowing the jewels are among
us, sifts through all the people to find the best advocates of the
public interest.

* We are sure politics is a dirty business.
When we step back, we can understand why. We can see that corruption
pervades our political system because the parties control the selection
of candidates for public office. They choose candidates who have proven
they will renounce principle and sacrifice honor for the benefit of
their party. When we add to this the corrosive effect of political
campaigning on a candidates' character, we begin to see it's not
politics that's dirty, it's the infrastructure that poisons those who
seek public office. That may encourage us to think about an electoral
process based on careful selection by thoughtful people rather than the
corruption inherent in a system based on campaigning for votes.